


decay exists as an extant form of life

by plumesvertes



Category: Mushroom Age (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, I didn't even like Tom but now I'm emo about him, Mind Control, Missing Scene, Trippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:55:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25216606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumesvertes/pseuds/plumesvertes
Summary: me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shitmushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that mattersme cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	decay exists as an extant form of life

**Author's Note:**

> why can't I just write normal fic for fandoms with more than a handful of people

Tom’s head was spinning. From the time travel? No, he’d been here several hours, and the unpleasant side effects had long since worn off. He stared at a point in the distance to anchor himself - the pointed tip of a brown mushroom cap - but his vision was clouded by the strange particles that hung in the air. Perhaps Tom was allergic. Sleepiness was a side effect of allergies. Or was that allergy medicine?

 _Focus._ The bag with his equipment was still on his shoulder. In it was the portable vacuum system, the bags filled with the air samples, some white flower the Professor had given him for good luck, and the time phone - no, that was on his belt. That was what he needed to be doing. He needed to dial 2008, go home, write his damn thesis, and get ready for the wedding that was in two days. 

Except it wasn’t in two days. It was in two days minus a billion years. Everything was so confusing, time travel and graduation and marriage and _why was he so dizzy_? Tom needed to sit down.

Why was he sitting here? Tom didn’t remember sitting down on this - was this a very smooth rock or a very rocky mushroom? He stood up, and his back made the same sound as the leaves he’d been crunching underfoot. He was getting old. One billion and twenty-eight years old, to be exact.

The strange flora on the ground seemed to writhe as Tom looked down and put one foot in front of the other. He felt its firmness, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the earth was holding its breath, and any minute now it would burst out laughing at him and swallow him whole.

Tom turned his face skyward to look for the sun. Which way was west? He couldn’t tell; it was mushroom caps all the way down.

Wait. He didn’t need to walk anywhere at all. He just needed to use the phone to travel back. The phone that was in his hand—

There was no phone in Tom’s hand. Both his hands were gripping his head, tearing at his hair, but _why_? It set off an awful clanging in his skull, but Tom opened his eyes.

There was that purple mushroom. The one he’d passed as he’d wandered around in circles for what Tom now realized must’ve been at least half a day. 

Something tried to wrest Tom’s consciousness away from him, but he pushed against the force with all his might and didn’t let go.

“Why won’t you just quit already?” said the mushroom.

Tom should’ve been more surprised that a fucking _mushroom_ had just spoken to him, but his brain accepted it with resigned agony. That gravelly voice had been in his head since the moment he got here, but Tom didn’t listen until it was too late.

Tom pried his hands off his throbbing temples and reached for the gun on his belt that he’d brought just in case. It probably wasn’t even loaded, but what use was a gun against a giant sentient mushroom anyway? He pointed it forward, an empty act of bravado, a shout of defiance with his last breath.

It could’ve been a hallucination meant to confuse him, but Tom felt a memory suddenly spark in his mind. Ten billion. He remembered a contact in his phone with that number. Who was it? 

He should’ve gone to China. Vera could’ve come with him, and even with the pollution it would have been a better honeymoon than the weekend getaway they’d planned. If Tom’s mental faculties weren’t currently occupied, he’d make a joke about the Chinese government and mind control. 

There was no more air in his lungs, but Tom laughed anyway.

“You can’t hold out much longer. Humans are weak. Your body and mind are already failing.”

Something was shaking - Tom’s hand, his field of vision, or maybe there was an earthquake. The mushroom was right - he was exhausted, dehydrated, it would be so easy to just surrender his mind to this mushroom. It would be just like falling asleep at his desk after those long nights spent writing and studying. Vera would put a blanket over his shoulders and leave a cup of coffee for when he wakes up. 

There was a pang of sadness, but it faded as soon as Tom noticed. His consciousness was slipping fast. If only he could remember—

A void filled with echoes, the existential vertigo of occupying a paradox. Space outside of time. _Someone_ was there, some transcendent being, and he had told Tom something. He felt, someplace deep in his gut that the psychic force couldn’t touch, that it was the most important thing in the universe, but Tom couldn’t remember because a fungus was mind-controlling him. 

The mushroom must know. It was siphoning the memory out of him, and suddenly Tom was filled with rage. “Tell me the name of God, you fungal piece of shit,” he spat.

Tom couldn’t see its face, but he felt the mushroom smile. “Can you feel your heart burning?”

His heart was beating against his chest. Blood coursed like magma through his aching body.

“Can you feel the struggle within?”

Tom’s head was screaming, now. The walls in his mind were beginning to crumble.

“The fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make,” the mushroom taunted. 

Tom fired at the mushroom once, twice, three times. The bullets lodged benignly in its flesh.

“You cannot kill me in a way that matters.”

Tears streamed down Tom’s face. “I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU,” he yelled, but it was a lie. Or maybe it was true, and he was too damn tired to feel fear anymore. Either way, this was it. He couldn’t resist the hypnotic powers any longer. 

It was too bad he couldn’t remember what that universe guy had told him. It was too bad he would never see Vera again.

No longer in control of his body, Tom turned on the phone and searched “Jurassic Period” in the contacts.

  
  



End file.
